The Detective's Daughter

Summer, 1981: The body of Kate Rokesmith is found by the River Thames in London. Her four-year-old son is wandering nearby, traumatised and mute. Detective Inspector Darnell cancels yet another trip he had promised his daughter Stella and heads for the scene of the crime. The murder is never solved. Winter, 2011: It's another busy day at the Clean Slate office. Owner and head cleaner Stella Darnell is annoyed to have her routine interrupted by the news that her father has died of a heart attack.

Seven cryptic photographs. A decades-old case. Can one woman find a killer? Before his death, Terry Darnell was a famous detective. His daughter Stella, a cleaner, has inherited his methodical mind. She has also inherited a strange case file: seven photographs of empty streets. Why did her father keep them for so many years? One photo dates from 1966, to a day when a young girl witnessed something that would haunt her forever.

Stella Darnell’s father died a year ago, but she has not moved on. He was Chief Superintendent at Hammersmith police station, and cleaning his house, Stella discovers a folder of photographs in his darkroom. The oldest photograph is dated 1966; to the very day the Moors Murderers were sent to prison for life. As Stella inches closer to the truth, the events of that day begin to haunt her too...

A man has jumped in front of a late night train. Stella Darnell, a cleaner who solves crimes, suspects it's murder. Now she's stirring up the past with questions that no one wants to answer. Jack Harmon, a driver on the Tube, has a new home at the top of an old water tower, with a perfect bird's eye view of London.

The summer of 1976 was the hottest in living memory. In the Botanical Gardens at Kew, a lost little girl, dizzied by the heat, thought she saw a woman lying dead on the ground. But when she opened her eyes, the woman had gone. Forty years later, Stella Darnell, the detective's daughter, is investigating a chilling new case. What she uncovers will draw her into the obsessive world of botany and towards an unsolved murder that has lain dormant for decades....

The summer of 1976 was the hottest in living memory. A lost little girl, dizzied by the heat, stumbled upon a deserted museum. She thought she saw a woman lying dead on the ground. But when she opened her eyes, the woman had gone. Forty years later, cleaner and detective Stella Darnell is investigating a suspected murder in the Botanical Gardens at Kew.

In January 1987, Helen Honeysett goes on an evening run from her riverside cottage and disappears. Twenty-nine years later, Helen's body has never been found. Her husband has hired a detective to find out what happened all those years ago, but when the five households on that desolate stretch of...

January, 1987. In the depths of winter, only joggers and dog walkers brave the Thames towpath after dark. Helen Honeysett, a young newlywed, sets off for an evening run from her riverside cottage and disappears. Twenty-nine years later, Helen's body has never been found. Her husband has asked Stella Darnell, a private detective, and her sidekick Jack Harmon, to find out what happened all those years ago.

Forty years ago, seventeen-year-old Cassie Baker took a shortcut home from a small Cotswolds village, and was never seen again. Twenty years later, Cotswolds police found Cassie's remains while searching for another missing teenager, Bryony Motson. Bryony's body was never found. Now Stella Darnell, cleaner and private detective, has decided to find out what happened to Bryony. She knows her investigation will be dangerous.

As night falls, 17-year-old Cassie Baker leaves Winchcome and takes her usual shortcut down a moonlit country lane. She never makes it home. With no body and no evidence, she's just another teenage runaway.    

London, 1940. A woman lies dead in a bombed-out house. It looks like she's another tragic casualty of the Blitz, until police pathologist Aleck Northcote proves she was strangled and placed at the scene. But Northcote himself has something to hide. And when his past catches up with him, he, too, is murdered. Tewkesbury, 2020. Beneath the vast stone arches of Tewkesbury Abbey, a man has been fatally stabbed. He is Roddy March, an investigative journalist for a podcast series uncovering miscarriages of justice. 

1941. Rupert and Adelaide Stride are raising their two daughters, Clare and Rosa, in the midst of war. When Rupert is called to fight, he dies on the beaches of Dunkirk, leaving his family to fend for themselves. 2023. Decades later, Clare and Rosa have retreated to the annex, trapped in the place where they were raised: Yew Tree House. When the rooms are put up for rent, Jack Harmon sees the perfect spot for a family holiday with his twins and detective Stella Darnell. But then the children discover a skeleton with a hole in its skull hidden in the brambles of a decommissioned WWII pill box.

Bloomsbury presents The Shrine by Lesley Thomson, read by Richard Atlee. 'This is Lesley Thomson at her very best; a wonderfully twisty story told with her customary warmth and brilliant eye for social detail. I loved it.' ELLY GRIFFITHS A decades-old murder. A haunting legacy. A plot for...